After 15 years, I own another Scorpio

[Desert Scorpio]

Greetings All,
I had a Scorpio (87 build I seem to recall) from 1992 to 1996. I loved the car except for one thing. Yes, the transmission. Issues would crop up every year like clockwork, so I finally got rid of it in '96...but the fire still smoldered.
Fast forward to April 2011. I found a Scorpio in San Diego. Not a lot wrong, and except for a trans leak (imagine that) it was a driving car. Since I swore if I ever got another one the first thing i would do is rebuild the trans, I bought it.




White/Raven, great leather, no major damage, and unbroken fog lights! As you can see I need another drivers fender. I had the rear panel off to fix the license lights. I have already done quite a bit of sorting and cleaning so I will be updating this post to show what I have done.
I also want to thank everyone on here. I have been devouring this forum for tips and suggestions. I hope to repay the favor somehow.

[Ed Lijewski]

Congrats! Why would you need to remove the housing to fix the license plate lights--what was wrong?

YMMV

[$KRILLA]

Nice car good luck

[merkurdriver]

Welcome back. Many owners fix the leaky A4LD problem by fitting a factory T9 5spd in their Scorpio Hard to find parts, but cheaper than an A4LD rebuild. (repeatedly)

[Desert Scorpio]

Well yes, a 5 speed would be ideal. I'm sure I wil be looking for the stuff I need to do that eventually. As for the license plate lights, it looked like someone put in bulbs that were too high a wattage. The housings were melted and cracked. A bit of JB Weld and they were as good as new. I really didn't need to pull the reflector panel, but I wanted to see what was going on in back of it.

[John Tumminia]

I've bought many scorpios with transmission leaks(from the front seal) put on a trans cooler and drove them home without any problems.All 13 of my scorpios have trans coolers never a problem.

[MerkurScorpio]

A trans cooler is an absolute must. My transmission was rebuilt in a less-than-stellar fashion a few years back (she still leaks...you know how that goes!), but I credit the cooler to keeping the transmission going strong. Due to financial issues, it looks like it's going to have to get me through to 2013, so some trans fluid-specific gasket maker on the leaky spots and a good cooler will be my way of keeping her on the road. It's entirely possible it may go for years like this...why replace what isn't entirely broken, right?

Another good example of what a cooler can do is my wife's Scorpio. I bought her car for $200 with a bad trans, only to find out the original cooling arrangement in the radiator was screwed up thanks to copious amounts of accumulated road crap. I re-routed everything and put in a cooler, replaced the fluid, and redid the pan gasket, and voila...working transmission! A little pump whine, but for around town it's been great!

So the moral of the story is: COOLER COOLER COOLER!